


The Hitchhiker

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Series: Smutswap 2018 Fills [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Biology, Bestiality, Body Horror, F/M, Hunted with a sexual forfeit for getting caught (rape), Non-Human Genitalia, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Raped by Monsters, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 19:24:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14087952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: Lena Bowen has just woken from cryo to perform her shift of work aboard the freighter Costaguana, hauling ore from the furthest reaches of space.  Should be simple, right?  Unfortunately for her, the cargo includes something other than just raw metal.  The crew fed its hunger, but its interest in Lena is to satisfy a different sort of craving.





	The Hitchhiker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirtiersocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtiersocks/gifts).



> Written for Smutswap 2018, in response to a prompt asking for, among other things, an insect like alien and a human, with possible non-consent.

Lena Bowen wandered the corridors of the _Costaguana_ , ignoring the creaks and groans of the metal.  The ship was old and had been hauling several thousand tons of ore from X-2970, a backwater outpost at the ass-end of explored space, for about nine months.  Of course it creaked and groaned.

“Raj and Griggs aren’t here to wake us up.” Baird said, stepping into his flight suit, emblazoned with a large Nakano-Alvarez Corporation Logo on the back.  “Or for us to tuck them in.”

Lena didn’t particularly mind.  She’d specifically requested being put on the same shift as Baird on the return trip to Earth, because the months en route with Griggs were miserable.  He’d made constant passes at her, letting her know that chicks who knew how to use a wrench were sexy, and making guesses about Lena’s sex life that made her wonder if he had ever _seen_ a woman before.

Aboard a freighter like this, heavily automated, only a few crew members were needed during transit.  The ship was doing most of the work, the flight crew was more or less a backstop against software or hardware failure.  And even with a skeleton crew, their employers mandated a maximum of two crewmembers active at one time except for emergencies.  The others were supposed to be in cryo.  It was more economical to have crews rotating in and out of the freezer than have them all awake throughout the entire voyage, sucking up life support and food.  Six months was the allotted maximum because otherwise, people started to get… squirrelly.

It was her and Baird’s turn up.  The two of them were going to be there to keep the ship afloat and each other sane for twenty-six weeks, before tagging out and letting the last two crewmen, Janetty and Michaels, handle the last leg.  Then they’d all wake up to offload the ship and get some R&R.

Baird headed for engineering, to do the standard start-of-shift check up.  Lena headed for the bridge to officially punch in as caretakers of the _Costaguana_.  The next six months would be uneventful, but tolerable with Baird around, then next thing she’d know they’d be orbiting Earth with a nice paycheck and some shore leave.

* * *

The Hitchhiker woke.  The commotion had roused it from sleep.  Metal commotion, machinery.  That was what had awoken it.

It had slept when the last two warm things were gone.  Had hidden in meat and metal and wire and had slept, waiting for the sign the next prey would arrive.  Six limbs dropped to the floor, tapping against it as it ventured forth.

It was now awake.

And there were two new warm things.  Two new prey.

The Hitchhiker had grown when it slept.  It was too big to fit inside the small tunnels above it anymore, the ones too small for prey to venture through but were strewn throughout the environment.  No matter, it was strong and fast and had gotten stronger and faster as it slept.

It sensed the vibrations as the prey walked the ship, felt and heard the footfalls going in two separate directions.  One had louder footfalls, was bigger.  Would provide more sustenance and feasting on it would make hunting the other easier.

It headed for the louder footfalls.

* * *

“Baird?” She said over the intercom to no answer.  She had repeated this several times, feeling number and sicker each time there was no response.

Something had gone very, very wrong last shift, as she looked over the computer.  The food stores looked to be way too full, the length of the voyage.  Maybe scheduling was off and the ship had been unattended for longer than it should’ve been?  That was unsafe, but understandable.

Then she got to the duty logs.

There was something in the cargo bay that wasn’t just ore.  They’d picked something up at the backwater outpost on the edge of habited space.  It wasn’t clear what it was, just one week into the voyage, Captain Ellis’s notes began to focus on the hold.  Two weeks in, he reported that he and McNeil checked the hold.  Two days later, the bad dreams started.  The Captain’s log, usually jargon-heavy and detailed became sparser, more diffuse.

That’s when she rang up Baird the first time.

She drew up the cryo records, and out of the four shifts, only the last ones were still frozen; Captain Ellis, McNeil, Raj, and Griggs hadn’t gone back to sleep on schedule.  Then she checked the medbay records, and found those were missing; had someone formatted the medbay’s computer?  She cycled up the surveillance camera for medbay and gasped.  The place was trashed, completely and utterly; someone tearing the console from the wall.  Cycling through more cameras, she caught a sickly gray-green trail of material in some corridors, along with crusty, red-brown splatter stains.  She continued to call Baird.

The creaking of metal and groans didn’t sound quite like usual noise anymore. 

Several cameras were down.  That was never unusual; they were the cheapest the company could afford, it was hardly surprising.  Except what the functioning cameras showed made what the broken ones didn't worse.  She called Baird again, until she finally found the camera nearest to him.  The gray-green trail was there, along with more splatter art.  These ones were still wet.

That was all she needed to see.

She wheeled around from the monitor.  And got to her feet.  Something was aboard the ship.  She needed to do something.  There weren’t any weapons aboard; for an ore haul mission from the ass-end space the company determined the risks of piracy were low enough to render it uneconomical to include armed security personnel.

Baird was gone…

No, Baird couldn’t be gone.  He was ex-Merchant Marine, he’d seen action, he was the toughest crewman in the company fleet.  She’d go down to engineering, find him, and warn him.  He’d know what to do.  He was good in situations like this. 

She kept telling herself that and not believing it at all until she got to engineering.  There only thing she could find was Baird’s tablet, lying broken on the floor.  She raced back towards the bridge, stopping halfway when she heard it.  Down the hallway came a wheezing, gasping series of breaths.  It was pained, awful, and unmistakably Baird.

She turned the corner and ran until she came across Baird, and let out a cry that she forced herself to stifle. He was laying on a pile of debris, belly-up.  Desiccated, mostly skeletonized remains lay tangled with computer components, vent shaft covers, and Baird.  The wheezing was coming from Baird, but that was not possible.  Because his body was splayed open and hollowed out.

Then the pile of debris rose.

* * *

The hunt was on.

The Hitchhiker had been following the prey for a long time; initially heading for where the prey was before realizing it was heading for where the last prey was.  It could catch this one.  Quite easily in fact.  It took its time.  It recognized a pattern.  Two prey with a long wait time in between.

The prey had separated, and the first was easy to catch unawares.  It killed the prey, rent the body and gorged itself.  Then it crawled off to wait for the other.

This other prey was afraid, it’s heart was rapid and it reeked of fear.  That meant the prey would be wary.  That mattered little, as it was stronger than the prey.  But the fear was satisfying.  So it hid, preparing to ambush the prey.  The call it sent out matched its last prey’s vocalizations, at least the few it heard as it fed.

The lure worked, and the prey came until it realized, too late, that the sounds were not coming from its corpse.

It rushed the prey, grabbing it and lifting it.  Instead of immediately rending it or perforating it to feed, it paused.

This one was different than the others.  It could tell.  They all were variations on the same pattern, but this one was more different from all of the others.  It wanted to learn the differences.  So it tore at the false skin that the prey had that did not bleed when cut and examined its regular skin.

The thing thrashed antennae wandered over its body, feeling out the differences between this prey and the others that its eyes could not see.

This prey was smaller than the others, its skin darker.  Its body had additional tissue protruding from the torso, while between its legs it lacked organs the others had; in fact through another layer of fake skin it could tell there was an opening into this one's body theothers lacked.  That was the difference.  

Something stirred in the Hitchhiker's body.  This prey was unique.  It was the same species as the other play, but its organs were different in a way overrode its desire for food. 

It wanted much more from this prey than food.

* * *

She was unceremoniously dumped on the floor, clothes torn after the creature had groped her.  Room spinning, she got a good look at the thing as it stood up off the floor.  It was tall and broad; almost filling the hallway, but it stood on two pairs of spindly legs with too many joints.  Similarly spindly arms protruded from the front of its torso, four of them in all.  Each ended in long, branching hands ending in claws, which it rung against one other.

The thing was black-green.  In the dim light of hallways, it was luminescent itself; fissures in the side of its carapace running from its legs up its torso were glowing green.   A pair of bulbous black eyes reflected the glow themselves.  Its face was just those two eyes, and a long, rigid tongue thing, with two giant antennae wavering about, narrowly missing her.  The random junk and body parts hung off the thing; like it was wearing mummified corpses and trashed computers as a stole.  A bent and twisted human arm reached for her from the side of its carapace, fingers spread wide, and next to the things’ head was the dented remnant of a face, mouth open in a wordless scream illuminated by the creature itself.  Thankfully, Baird was not visible when looking at the creature eye-to-eye.

She crab-walked her way back from the thing as it stood there stock still, even stopping sharpening its claws against one another.  She was almost out of the room when she noticed something.

The thing was so still that the moment a part of it moved it caught her eye.  Something, low on its torso, somewhere between the lower set of arms and where the thing’s legs began, was writhing and wriggling.  It was placed too high, but it almost made her think of a...  The thing took a step towards her.

Lena leapt to her feet, spun around, and peeled down the hall.  It was a few seconds before the thing bounded at her, thudding behind her and getting ever closer.  Enough to scratch another hole in her jumpsuit or shove her off balance or run its mouth against her.  It would do this, then stop.  And she would keep running, until it started again and caught her again.

Her lungs burned.

She stumbled and sprinted and slipped on slime and tried to form a plan.  Coming up with an idea, she hung a sharp right and headed for the cargo bay.  She tried not to think of the crash behind her as the thing took the corner too fast, skidded into the wall and continued on without breaking stride.   She could do a circuit, maybe lose it in between ore buckets, then lock it in.  Trap it.  The hold’s doors were heavily reinforced, and the vents were too small for something as big as it was to get through.  She could trap it.

She managed to get to the bay, doors already open, when the thing bored of the chase and burst forward, bowling her over.  She hit the deck and tumbled and spun, coming to rest against something _hard_.  She forced her eyes open to see the dim lights of the hold, and she rested against one of the massive bins of ore. 

Before she could stand, she was lifted again, upside-down.  She tried thrashing her way out of the four strong hands that coiled around her thighs and waist but failed.  She felt the thing’s antenna running against her legs; shuddering when they found the holes in her jumpsuit and hit bare skin.  Its mouthparts prodded her crotch, and she winced as it pressed down on her panties, rubbing her from under a too-thin layer of cotton.

She tried telling herself this was a dream, that she wasn’t being molested by some giant bug wearing her coworkers' corpses on its back.  Then one of the hands shot out and flicked its claws, cleanly slicing the crotch out of her underwear.  With no fanfare, the thing shoved its tongue thing inside, and Lena screamed a “No!” loud enough to echo.  It’s mouth was thick and rigid, but something at the tip of it flicked and prodded at her insides, as it mechanically lifted her up and down, fucking her with its mouth.  She clawed at the arms holding her, her nails not even managing to nick the hard exoskeleton.  It if noticed her efforts, it didn’t show. 

The worst part was when it found a spot inside that made Lena moan.  It must’ve liked the noise, because it kept at that spot for far too long for it to be random, before going back to thrusting inside her with its mouth.  Lena was disgusted at herself at reacting to the monster’s actions.

It pulled out, running its mouthparts against her lips, gently lapping up some of the wetness there.  Then with a speed that made her gasp, it twisted her around and spun her and now she was rightside up and facing the thing, which poked at her face with its mouth for a while before bracing her against the ore bin.  A clawed hand was on each of her wrists and ankle, spreading her wide open, and shifting her position around, lining her up with its midsection.

Lena kept begging “no”.

If it understood, it paid no heed.

The majority of the thing wasn’t slimy.  It glistened because it’s shell reflected light, but it was hard and dry.  But the bit between its legs was _wet_ as it traveled her thigh, coiling around it as it ran upwards.  The thing found itself between her legs, and it curled up.  She clenched every muscle she had as the thing’s cock, because she was pretty sure it was a cock, ran down her ass, leaving a cold wet trail.

The thing’s cock moved while the rest of it was still, holding her.  It found her snatch and wriggled in.  She hadn’t paid much attention when she ran, and had her eyes screwed shut at the moment, but she new the tip was very narrow, but it got thicker every inch it pushed into her.  She was stretched wide as the thing burrowed deep inside her, until the its bulk pressed up against her hips.

The thing didn’t thrust so much as grind it’s body against her, the organ in her snatch moving independently of the rest of it.  It expanded and contracted, lengthened until it reached her limit and then shortened.  Curled and vibrated and stroked her inside.  Something on the outside wiggled against her lips.

The size of its cock and the force of its motions didn't hurt. She felt every movement, every unpredictable shift, and it was good.

She felt it and wished it was painful instead.

It was unlike anything else she’d felt as the thing fucked her, the writhing and thrusting and shaking inside her increasing in pace.  She hated the way her screams and begging turned to plaintive whimpering, how she subconsciously began grinding her hips along with the thing and moaning.  She hated this thing for raping her, and herself for enjoying it.

The thing worked its mouthparts down into her mouth, twisting and shoving.  She tried biting down but couldn’t impede its progress.  She tasted herself as the thing probed her mouth and slid into her throat.  She couldn’t breathe.  She tried to shake her head, break free, thrash her way out, but couldn’t.  While she felt the thing slither down her throat, cutting her off from air as it explored, it pressed its torso into her harder, it’s cock swelling and twisting and stretching her.

Specks of light danced before her eyes, and tension mounted in her core as it fucked and fucked and fucked.  She should’ve blacked out from the thing in her throat, or came from the thing in her snatch, but did neither.  She felt light headed and her vision blurred and the pressure inside her kept building, but release didn’t come.  She didn’t fall unconscious or cum, she just was pressed against the wall, being fucked harder and harder by the thing.

She had no idea how long it lasted.  She’d shifted from praying to black out to praying to cum to hating herself for it to wondering if any other crewman suffered like this before death to losing any coherency.  And the thing kept fucking her.  It might’ve been fifteen minutes, an hour, a day, a week, she had no clue.

When the thing came, thick, cold fluid flooded her abused snatch in waves that could not have possibly fit inside her if it’s cock wasn’t growing smaller.  She felt full beyond limits she thought she had and then some, but it wasn’t painful.  She shuddered and shrieked around the thing’s mouth in her throat and came harder than she could remember, and her eyes rolled back as she came.

* * *

It lay on the floor, observing the prey.  The mate.

The drives that compelled it sated, it curled up against the wall, letting the mate drop to the floor, leaking fluids from her hole.

It was an interesting creature, this one.  It wasn’t much of a chase but capturing and copulating her satisfied urges it hadn’t known it had.  Its fear was very satisfying, indeed, and did not abate throughout the ritual.  The desire to copulate with her was overriding, and that was very satisfying as well.

The mate coughed and halfheartedly flopped its soft, weak body over.

The hitchhiker chittered, and the mate looked at it.  It was afraid again. 

It lifted itself from the ground as the mate crawled.  It was slower now than before, crawling on all fours, leaking fluids from its hole. 

It slunk back down.  It did not need to eat… would not eat her, and it was not ready to copulate again.  Its prey could crawl away, it could find it.  It would find it and chase it and mate with it again and again and again.

The mate stopped at the end of this chamber, forcing itself to its feet.  It was on one of their machines.  That did not matter.  It would wait until it was ready to copulate again, then seek the prey out.

Then something metal slid down between it and the prey.  Sound blared and lights flashed. 

When it was ready to mate again, it stood up and examined the metal barrier.  It pounded into it, finding no yield.  It hit harder and harder.  No matter.

Its antennae wavered, studying the chamber.  It could find a way out, it would find a way out.  Then it could find the mate again and chase her and copulate.  If it could not find a way out, it could wait.  Maybe the mate would return, maybe not.

It had waited a long time before it first awakened.

It was good at waiting.

* * *

It took her a long time to hobble to the bridge, and the first thing she did was vent the cargo hold.  She watched the video feed of the thing, pelted by misplaced tools and unsecured bins being dragged to the rear of the hold and falling.  For good measure she activated emergency protocols and dumped the entire load of ore into space.  Better safe than sorry; who knew if there was more of whatever it was there.  With any luck all of it would get sucked into the gravity well of a star or planet with an atmosphere worth noting and burn on reentry.

She checked, double-checked, and triple-checked the ship for any potential fellow creature, teaching herself to run diagnostic scans she didn’t know existed until she started digging.  She tore apart the entertainment console in one of the bunks to rig up a half-assed repair job for medbay.  First she got treatment for lacerations and vulvar bruising, then submitted herself for diagnostic tests, blood tests, pelvic imaging.  The computers found no evidence of anything further amiss with the ship, or with her outside of minor physical trauma.

Of course, that wasn’t necessarily right.  Machines looked for things they were programmed to look for.  If something as completely out of their dataset, then they wouldn’t see it.  At least, she thought not.  She’d flooded her system with the strongest antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiparasitics, and contraceptives on hand, knowing she’d end up checking back into medbay to deal with side effects at some point.

After the third clean lab result, the computer helpfully asked if she would submit to a psychiatric test.  Squirrelly behaviors were not unusual for extended space travel, but the difference between eccentric and batshit crazy could cost a company a lot of money.  The results were that she was within acceptable limits, however, she displayed flatter affect, more distractibility, and heightened irritability compared to her pre-departure baseline test results.

That could’ve been completely normal, given what had happened.  Or it could not have been.

She tried anything to occupy her time.  Videos proved unable to hold her attention any more.  She’d read… the selection of books in the ship’s electronic library were not to her tastes but she was forcing herself.  She did her job listlessly to occupy time and do the bare minimum required to keep the ship from falling apart.  She also found herself lying naked in her bunk and using her fingers or whatever handy tool would fit to get herself off, several times a day; she could never quite recall what she was picturing in her mind while doing so, only that she’d end up feeling exhausted and satisfied and wanting to go again.  It was boredom, she told herself; no one to talk to and no other choices for diversions.

By the end of the week, she sat in the Captain’s chair on the bridge, gazing out the heavily reinforced window at the blackness ahead of her, broken by pinpoints of light impossibly far away, a lukewarm cup of coffee at her side.  She didn’t know what to do.  She flipped through the ships computer for corporate directives in case of… a contingency like this.  Xenobiological first contact was to be peaceable if possible, with rapid notification to the corporation first and governing authority second. Possible contamination involved quarantine and alerting a superior; in the case at hand she was the highest ranked crewman aboard now.  In case of sexual assault aboard, the company again suggested alerting a superior, and also advised that the standard employment contract included a clause in section twelve that waived any liability on the part of the company.

It was almost six months until the next shift was supposed to wake up.  Should they though?  If there was contamination… she ended up setting the clock back another six months for them; they’d wake at the destination. 

That meant she was alone, hopefully, for a year.  Plenty could happen in that time.  She set up an automated message, so if she… was unable to inform the docks what happened in person, they’d know the ship needed quarantine.

She gazed straight ahead at the starfield.  Somewhere, infinitesimally small, was a little blue planet with billions of people and shipyards that sent and received people and supplies across the galaxy.  A little blue planet that was coming closer.  One that her ship’s cargo had been bound for, and which they were on schedule to reach in a year.

A lot could happen in twelve months.

Lena Bowen sat and waited.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a big fan of a certain 1970s horror sci-fi film and the countless books, games, and movies that were influenced by it. I'd like to thank DirtierSocks for throwing out this request, it was fun trying to work out thoughts for the thing, and although I'm not 100% satisfied with the results, I think I did okay.


End file.
